All brightly gathering round affection's hearth.

Of mingled prayer they told; of Sabbath hours;
Of morn's farewell, and evening's blessed meeting;
Of childhood's voice, amidst the household bowers;
And bounding step, and smile of joyous greeting;
But thou, young mother! to thy gentle heart
Didst take thy babe, and meekly so depart.
How many hopes have sprung in radiance hence!
Their trace yet lights the dust where thou art
sleeping!

A solemn joy comes o'er me, and a sense
Of triumph, blent with nature's gush of weeping,
As, kindling up the silent stone, I see
The glorious vision, caught by faith, of thee.
Slumberer! love calls thee, for the night is past;
Put on the immortal beauty of thy waking!
Captive! and hear'st thou not the trumpet's blast,
The long, victorious note, thy bondage breaking?
Thou hear'st, thou answer'st, "God of earth and
Heaven!

Here am I, with the child whom thou hast given!"

THE EXILE'S DIRGE.*

Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious Winter's rages,
Thou thy wordly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.

Cymbeline.

I attended a funeral where there were a number

formed such service as is usual on similar occa

THE TOMB OF MADAME LANGHANS.*

To a mysteriously consorted pair
This place is consecrate; to death and life,
And to the best affections that proceed
From this conjunction.

Wordsworth.

How many hopes were borne upon thy bier, O bride of striken love! in anguish hither! Like flowers, the first and fairest of the year Plucked on the bosom of the dead to wither;

ward, and asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther's Hymns, and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and using the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea from the Vaterland, a word which often occurred in this hymn. It was a long, slow, and mournful air, which they sung as they bore the body along; the words "mein Gott," "mein Bruder," and "Vaterland," died away in distant echoes amongst the woods. I shall long remember that funeral hymn.-Flint's Recollections of the Valley of the Mississippi.

• Published in the Winter's Wreath for 1830.

"Brother!" (so the chant was sung
In the slumberer's native tongue,)
"Friend and brother! not for thee
Shall the sound of weeping be:-
Long the Exile's wo hath lain
On thy life a withering chain;
Music from thine own blue streams,
Wandered through thy fever-dreams;
Voices from thy country's vines,
Met thee 'midst the alien pines,
And thy true heart died away;
And thy spirit would not stay."

So swelled the chant; and the deep wind's moan
Seemed through the cedars to murmur-"Gone!

"Brother by the rolling Rhine,

Stands the home that once was thine-
Brother! now thy dwelling lies
Where the Indian arrow flies!
He that blest thine infant head,
Fills a distant greensward bed;
She that heard thy lisping prayer,
Slumbers low beside him there;
They that earliest with thee played,
Rest beneath their own oak shade,
Far, far hence!-yet sea nor shore
Haply, brother! part ye more;
God hath called thee to that band
In the immortal Fatherland!"

.f The Fatherland!"—with that sweet word
A burst of tears 'midst the strain was heard.

"Brother! were we there with thee
Rich would many a meeting be!
Many a broken garland bound,
Many a mourned and lost one found!
But our task is still to bear,

Still to breathe in changeful air;
Loved and bright things to resign,
As even now this dust of thine;
Yet to hope!-to hope in Heaven,
Though flowers fall, and ties be riven-
Yet to pray! and wait the hand
Beckoning to the Fatherland !"

And the requiem died in the forest's gloom;-
They had reached the Exile's lonely tomb.

Thy spirit, borne upon a breeze of joy All day hath ranged through sunshine, clear, yet mild:

And now thou tremblest!-wherefore ?-in thy soul

There lies no past, no future.-Thou hast heard
No sound of presage from the distance roll,
Thy heart bears traces of no arrowy word

From thee no love hath gone; thy mind's young

eye

Hath looked not into Death's, and thence become A questioner of mute Eternity,

A weary searcher for a viewless home :

Nor hath thy sense been quickened unto pain,
By feverish watching for some step beloved;
Free are thy thoughts, an ever-changeful train,
Glancing like dewdrops, and as lightly moved.

Yet now, on billows of strange passion tossed,
How art thou wildered in the cave of sleep!
My gentle child! 'midst what dim phantoms lost,
Thus in mysterious anguish dost thou weep?

Awake! they sadden me-those early tears, First gushings of the strong dark river's flow That must o'ersweep thy soul with coming years The unfathomable flood of human wo!

Awful to watch, ev'n rolling through a dream, Forcing wild spray-drops but from childhood's eyes!

Wake, wake! as yet thy life's transparent stream Should wear the tinge of none but summer skies.

Come from the shadow of those realms unknown, Where now thy thoughts dismayed and darkling

rove;

Come to the kindly region all thine own,

The home still bright for thee with guardian love.

Happy, fair child! that yet a mother's voice
Can win thee back from visionary strife!—
Oh! shall my soul, thus wakened to rejoice,
Start from the dreamlike wilderness of life?

And sometimes there my wayward mind
A still reproach can see:

And sometimes Pity-soft and deep,
And quivering through a tear;
Even as if Love in Heaven could weep,
For Grief left drooping here.

And oh my spirit needs that balm,
Needs it 'midst fitful mirth;
And in the night-hour's haunted calm,
And by the lonely hearth.

Look on me thus, when hollow praise
Hath made the weary pine

For one true tone of other days,

One glance of love like thine!

Look on me thus, when sudden glee
Bears my quick heart along,
On wings that struggle to be free,
As bursts of skylark song.

In vain, in vain!-too soon are felt
The wounds they can not flee;
Better in childlike tears to melt,
Pouring my soul on thee!

Sweet face, that o'er my childhood shone,
Whence is thy power of change,

Thus ever shadowing back my own,
The rapid and the strange?

Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,
Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear-
Oh! bid the conflict cease!

I hear thy whisper-and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart:
Thou bid'st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart;
Dear one! this must not be.

The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky-
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit's gaze!
Thou art all earth to me!

Shut out the sunshine from my dying room, The jasmine's breath, the murmur of the bee; Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom! They speak of love, of summer, and of thee, Too much-and death is here!

Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?
Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray
From the dread hour so near!

If I could but draw courage from the light
Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!
-Not now! 'twill not be now!-my aching sight
Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,
Bearing all strength away!

-I know the mystery well!

In mine own trembling bosom lies

The spirit of the spell!

Of Memory, Conscience, Love, 'tis bornOh! change no longer, thou!

For ever be the blessing worn

Heaven!

I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die!

-Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven? -Return! thy parting wakes mine agony !

-Oh, yet awhile delay!

But thou, my friend, my brother!

Thou 'rt speeding to the shore Where the dirgelike tone of parting words Shall smite the soul no more! And thou wilt see our holy dead; The lost on earth and main; Into the sheaf of kindred hearts, Thou wilt be bound again!

Tell, then, our friend of boyhood,

That yet his name is heard

On the blue mountains, whence his youth
Passed like a swift bright bird.
The light of his exulting brow,
The vision of his glee,

Are on me still-Oh! still I trust
That smile again to see.

And tell our fair young sister,

The rose cut down in spring, That yet my gushing soul is filled

With lays she loved to sing.

Her soft, deep eyes look through my dreams,
Tender and sadly sweet;-

Tell her my heart within me burns
Once more that gaze to meet !

'Midst those green wilds how many a fount lies gleaming,

Fringed with the violet, coloured with the skies! My boyhood's haunt, through days of summer

dreaming,

Under young leaves that shook with melodies.

My home! the spirit of its love is breathing
In every wind that plays across my track;
From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing,
Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back.

There am I loved-there prayed for-there my

mother

Sits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye; There my young sisters watch to greet their brother

-Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly.

There, in sweet strains of kindred music blending, All the home-voices meet at day's decline;

One are those tones, as from one heart ascending,— There laughs my home-sad stranger! where is thine ?

Ask'st thou of mine ?--In solemn peace 'tis lying, Far o'er the deserts and the tombs away; 'T is where I, too, am loved with love undying, And fond hearts wait my step-But where are they?

Ask where the earth's departed have their dwelling!

Ask of the clouds, the stars, the trackless air!
I know it not, yet trust the whisper, telling
My lonely heart, that love unchanged is there.

And what is home, and where, but with the loving?

Happy thou art, that so canst gaze on thine!
My spirit feels but, in its weary roving,
That with the dead, where'er they be, is mine.

Go to thy home, rejoicing son and brother!
Bear in fresh gladness to the household scene!
For me, too, watch the sister and the mother,
I well believe-but dark seas roll between.

THE TWO HOMES.

Oh! if the soul immortal be,

Is not its love immortal too?

SEEST thou my home!-'tis where yon woods are waving,

In their dark richness, to the summer air; Where yon blue stream, a thousand flower-banks laving,

THE SOLDIER'S DEATH-BED.

Wie herrlich die Sonne dort untergeht! da ich noch ein Bube war-war's mein Lieblingsgedanke, wie sie zu leben, wie sie zu sterben!

Die Rauber.